Sigma Alpha Iota

Sai-natiOnal.ORg SummER 2014 PAN PIPES 13 but my parents weren't really that involved in the arts. It's not a situation where you have a family who all grew up in the arts, and they did such a great job helping their kids know the value and the importance of art, it wasn't so much about that. It's just that I was taking piano lessons but then my father who became ill and died of cancer, died when I was nine. So when you are that age and you lose a parent, it's hard for many children to articulate the grief and the loss they experience. ey don't have enough words yet, and I certainly did not have enough words to articulate my grief of my father's death. But for some reason, music was very soothing to me, and it transcended the need to put a linear set of words together. It allowed me to feel soothing. I could live in the moment, and so I became very interested in music actually for that reason. It just spoke to me in a holistic way, and I knew the value of it. Now as I got older, I became much more interested in the art of creating the music. I'd listen to other musicians and how they created. It didn't have to be a certain type of music, it was just that there was just something about creating something or listening to how they structured music and composed or the instruments they used or sang that helped me get training through music. Jo reeD: Now you also have an Associate's Degree in visual art, tell me about that side of the equation? JanE Chu: I just love art, and I've always loved drawing. So aer I finished graduate school in music, I wanted to keep and learn more about the fundamentals of creating visual art. So I went back and got an Associate Degree to learn those fundamentals, and now it's been so great because I can look at other people's paintings and other drawings, and I get it. I know what they had to go through in terms of creating the basics, how they put together their own compositions and structures, and I just marvel at what people do. Jo reeD: I read your children's book, Joy's Discovery, which you wrote in 2002 I believe, and I was surprised to discover that you not only wrote it but you illustrated it. JanE Chu: It really was just a 32-page children's book that's just semi-autobiographical of how I viewed straddling those multiple cultures. e Chinese culture and the American culture and trying to make sense of it and going through, and by the end of 32 pages, you realize you can appreciate who you are, and that's what I did. Jo reeD: You have a graduate degree in music and piano studies but then you have a second graduate degree in business — you have an MBA — from whence did this come? JanE Chu: It really was the opposite of what a lot of people do because I had been so trained in music and the arts, and I wanted to train that linear side that I hadn't participated in, and I knew that the business of the arts and having that business acumen would be helpful, and it has indeed. at along with philanthropy and combining it all have been critical skills for me to understand in my jobs. Jo reeD: What was it about arts management that drew you? JanE Chu: I understood already what it was like to be an artist, to produce, to create, to perform but what drew me to it was that when you look in the business of it you start seeing an infrastructure and realization that you can create an environment for the arts to bloom and thrive. And having that business infrastructure and the business acumen of how to make the arts work so that the arts can really shine, I learned a lot in business school about how to do that and that's typically how I think. How can we create an environment for the arts to bloom and to thrive? How can we create an environment that helps people understand that the arts are relevant and they belong to us all? at's what I learned in business school, thinking about that structure, those processes. Jo reeD: And also a Ph.D. in philanthropic studies, I'm assuming that augmented? JanE Chu: Well it did because then I had that opportunity to bring together the three sectors that we think about in the United States, especially with the business sector, the private giving, charitable contributions and public funding at the same time and understood how they played together. So it's been a good thing to understand for me. Jo reeD: And you certainly had to put all those skills to use in many of your previous jobs, not the least of which was the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City? JanE Chu: at's right. Jo reeD: You birthed that center in many, many ways. JanE Chu: We said it was like giving birth to a child on reality television. Putting together a $400 million performing arts center, and it wasn't me alone -- it was a huge team from our board of directors to construction workers -- and what was so satisfying about it really was that the essence of what we've been talking about already and that is standing in the middle of sometimes what is ambiguity but standing in the middle of a number of different people and perspectives that are sometimes seemingly opposite and who all can walk in there and be so comfortable and say, we're all working for the same project. And that's what the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City gave me the opportunity to learn about. So satisfying in terms of that, and now we're doing it again in other settings with the arts nationally. Jo reeD: When the Kauffman Center finally opened, can you describe what that was like for you, what was that day like? JanE Chu: It was so much fun, and we had a grand opening weekend, so we had several performances with artists from, everybody from Placido Domingo and Itzhak Perlman, Diana Krall, Bobby Watson, Tommy Tune, Patti Lupone, you name it. We had a whole slew of performers and a very satisfying third day where we had an open house for the public free. "Come over and see the building." We had ongoing performers for five and six hours and we planned that day for about 10,000 people to show up. We planned logistically: do we have the right people, do we have the right ushers, and things like that. en we thought, well maybe we should get ready for 20,000 just in case, and 55,000 people showed up in the rain to see our free open house and come in. It was so satisfying because we wanted this performing arts center to be something accessible to the public, make them feel like they belonged, and that was really the right way to start. Jo reeD: Clive Gillinson, who is the head of Carnegie Hall, he said in an interview, "A lot of great institutions get stuck because they're stuck on thinking what's best for the institution. 'I remember,' this is he talking, 'when I started, people would say, what's best for Carnegie Hall? And I would say, that's not the question. e question we should ask, the only question is, what's best for the impact we can have on people's lives through music?'" And it seems like that's a question you're interested in asking. JanE Chu: at's a very well-articulated way of looking at it, and that's what we wanted to saI MeMbers In actIon CHU continued on page 14

• Cover